6. lays: Songs.
13. curtains: Of the four-poster bed.
18. returned … sound: The ‘repeater’ watch sounded out the hour (in some cases the quarter-hour) when a button was pressed, a useful feature in the dark.
22. morning-dream: Imitating the messages from the gods received in dreams by Homeric heroes.
23. birthnight: Royal birthdays were occasions for celebration.
32. circled green: A ‘fairy ring’ of trampled grass, supposedly made by dancing fairies.
44. the box: In the theatre; see V, 14–19n. the ring: A fashionable drive in Hyde Park (Circus); also IV, 117.
45. equipage: Carriage with horses and attendant footmen (stressed on the final syllable).
46. chair: Sedan chair, carried by two servants.
55. chariots: Epic diction for ‘carriages’; also IV, 155. Pope is echoing Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid: ‘The love of horses, which they had, alive, / And care of chariots, after death survive’ (VI, 890–91).
56. ombre: Dramatized at length in Canto III, and see III, 27n.
58. elements: In accordance with the psychology based on the four elements and their prevalence in bodily ‘humours’, four character types are successively described in the poem as dominated by fire, water, earth, and air.
59. sprites: Spirits. termagants: ‘termagant: a bawling turbulent woman’ (Dictionary).
60. salamander: A lizard-like creature fabled to be able to live in fire.
62. tea: In Pope’s time rhymed with ‘away’ (and III, 8).
70. what sexes: In Paradise Lost, spirits ‘when they please / can either sex assume, or both’ (I, 423–4).
72. masquerades: Masked balls, immensely popular during the eighteenth century.
73. spark: ‘a lively, showy, splendid, gay man; it is commonly used with contempt’ (Dictionary).
85. garters, stars: Emblems of knighthood. coronets: Insignia of dukes.
86. Your Grace: Polite form of address to a duke or duchess.
89. bidden blush: Through the use of rouge; also 143.
94. impertinence: ‘trifle; thing of no value’ (Dictionary).
96. treat: Feast.
100. toyshop: Equivalent to a modern gift shop; ‘a shop where playthings and little nice manufactures are sold’ (Dictionary, citing this line).
101. sword-knots: Decorative ribbons on the hilts of swords.
110. main: Sea.
115. Shock: Or shough, a fashionable breed of long-haired lapdog.
118. billet-doux: Love letter (French).
121. toilet: Dressing table.
127. inferior priestess: Her lady’s maid.
131. nicely: Fastidiously.
134. Arabia: Perfume made from Arabian ingredients.
135. tortoise … elephant: Tortoise shell and ivory.
138. Bibles: In miniature format they were considered fashionable.
139. awful: Awesome.
143. purer blush: i.e. created by the use of rouge.
144. keener lightnings: Her pupils are enlarged with belladonna.
147. plait: Arrange in folds.
148. Betty: Generic name for a lady’s maid.
Canto II
4. Launched: Belinda’s party is travelling by boat up the Thames to Hampton Court.
7. sparkling cross: Arabella Fermor, who had been educated in a French convent, wore such a cross.
25. springes: Snares; two syllables, pronounced ‘sprindges’.
32. force … fraud: Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan (I, xiii): ‘Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.’
35. Phoebus: The sun.
38. gilt: Books in elegant gilt leather bindings.
47. secure: ‘free from danger; safe’ (Dictionary).
51. zephyrs: Breezes.
53. careful: Full of cares.
56. repair: ‘to go to; to betake himself’ (Dictionary).
70. Superior by the head: An epic hero would be taller than his followers.
73. sylphids: Female sylphs.
74. genii … demons: Guardian spirits.
77. purest aether: The pure air above the moon.
84. painted bow: Rainbow.
86. glebe: Farmland.
97. wash: Liquid cosmetics.
99. invention: Creativity (invenire).
100. furbelow: ‘a piece of stuff plaited and puckered together … on the petticoats or gowns of women’ (Dictionary).
103. slight: Trickery (as in ‘sleight of hand’).
105. Diana’s law: Chastity.
113. drops: Diamond earrings.
115. Crispissa: Curls (from crispere).
118. petticoat: A skirt, intended to be visible, beneath a gown.
120. ribs of whale: Petticoats were given their shape by whalebone stays.
124. the fair: The fair lady.
128. bodkin: ‘an instrument to draw a thread or ribbon through a loop’ (Dictionary, citing this line), and see also IV, 98 and note.
129. pomatums: Ointments.
131. alum styptics: Astringent ointments made from alum (a compound of aluminium and potassium), used to quench bleeding.
132. rivelled: ‘rivel: to contract into wrinkles and corrugations’ (Dictionary).
133. Ixion: Punished by Zeus, for his love of Hera, by being bound for eternity on a turning wheel.
134. whirling mill: Device for beating chocolate.
Canto III
4. Hampton: The royal palace at Hampton Court, twelve miles up the Thames from London, favoured by Queen Anne.
7. three realms: England, Scotland, and Ireland; the union of England and Scotland in 1707 created the United Kingdom.
23. Exchange: The Royal Exchange in London, the central venue for commerce and banking.
27. ombre: Card game for three players with forty cards. As ‘ombre’ (from Spanish hombre, man), Belinda has the right to call trumps.
29. join: Pronounced to rhyme with ‘nine’.
30. sacred Nine: The Muses.
33. matadore: The three highest-ranking cards; see also 49–53n.
41. succinct: Short.
42. halberts: Or halberds, ceremonial weapons combining a spear and a battleaxe.
44. velvet plain: The card table; as also ‘the verdant field’ (52), and ‘the level green’ (80 and note).
46. Let spades … they were: Recalling ‘God said, Let there be light, and there was light’ (Genesis 1:3).
49–53. Spadillio … Manillio … Basto: The three matadore cards: the ace and deuce of spades, and the ace of clubs.
59. rebel knave: The knave of spades.
61. Pam: The knave of clubs, highest card in the game of lu (or loo).
74. the globe: In contemporary playing cards, the king of clubs held a globe. This and other pictorial details would have been familiar to Pope’s first readers.
80. the level green: The card table is covered with green baize, with a pun on the grassy ‘green’ where fallen soldiers would lie.
84. habit: Clothing.
92. codille: Defeat of the ‘ombre’ player. Belinda and the Baron have each won four tricks, and she needs one more in order not to lose.
94. nice trick: Nicely judged trick, with a pun on ‘trickery’.
106. berries crackle: Coffee beans ground in the coffee mill.
107. shining altars of Japan: Lacquered or ‘japanned’ tables.
109. grateful: Pleasing.
111. At once: At one and the same time.
117. Coffee: Coffee-houses were popular venues for gossip and politics.
122. Scylla’s fate: Greek princess who betrayed her father Nisus by pulling a sacred hair from his head, and was punished by being metamorphosized into a bird.
132. engine: ‘any instrument’ (Dictionary, citing this line).
142. ideas: Images.
147. forfex: Scissors (Latin), playfully elevated epic diction.
152. But airy substance … again: ‘See Milton, Book 6, of Satan c
ut asunder by the angel Michael’ (Pope’s note).
164. coach and six: Carriage drawn by six horses.
165. Atalantis: The New Atalantis (1709), by Mary Delarivière Manley, a novel that retailed scandalous stories about thinly-disguised contemporary celebrities.
171. date: ‘end; conclusion’ (Dictionary).
173. labour of the gods: The walls of Troy were said to have been built by Apollo and Poseidon.
Canto IV
1–2. anxious cares … secret passions: Recalls Dido’s passion in Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid: ‘But anxious cares already seized the queen; / She fed within her veins a flame unseen’ (IV, 1–2).
4. their charms survive: i.e. they outlive their youthful beauty.
8. manteau: Fashionable outer garment, incongruously associated here with Cynthia (Diana), goddess of chastity and the hunt.
16. Spleen: Mental illness, known as ‘melancholy’, which was thought to originate in disorders of the spleen; see also 60 and note.
18. vapour: Melancholic attacks of the spleen were known as ‘the vapours’.
20. dreaded east: East winds, generally chilly in England, were thought to encourage melancholia.
24. Pain at her side: i.e. in the spleen. Megrim: Migraine.
25. wait: Wait upon.
34. airs: ‘an affected or laboured manner or gesture’ (Dictionary).
43. spires: Spirals.
45. Elysian scenes: Like those of the happy Elysian fields of the afterlife; see also ‘Dunciad’, IV, 417n.
46. machines: The elaborate scenic machinery of the theatre.
51. pipkin: Small pot. Homer’s tripod: Impressive kettle awarded as a prize at epic games.
52. goose-pie: ‘alludes to a real fact; a lady of distinction imagined herself in this condition’ (Pope’s note).
56. spleenwort: Fern thought to have curative powers (carried by Umbriel as Aeneas carried a golden bough in the underworld).
60. hysteric or poetic fit: Alluding to the age-old connection between melancholy and genius.
62. physic: Medicine.
69. citron-waters: Brandy with lemon peel. inflame: i.e. red-faced from drinking too much.
71. airy horns: Imagined infidelities, which would generate a cuckold’s horns.
75. costive: Constipated.
77. chagrin: ‘ill humour; vexation; fretfulness; peevishness. It is pronounced shagreen’ (Dictionary).
82. Ulysses … winds: In Odyssey, X.
89. Thalestris: Queen of the Amazons.
98. bodkin: ‘an instrument to dress the hair’ (Dictionary, citing this line), and see II, 128 and note.
99. paper-durance: Curling papers, held in place with strips of lead.
101. fillets: Headbands or ribbons.
109. toast: ‘a celebrated woman whose health is often drunk’ (Dictionary).
114. Exposed through crystal: The Baron will wear the lock set into a ring.
117. Hyde Park Circus: The ‘ring’; see I, 44 and note.
118. the sound of Bow: Within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bone (Bow), and therefore in the commercial City of London (as contrasted with the Westminster of fashion and politics).
124. nice conduct of a clouded cane: Skilful flourishing of a walking stick with a head of mottled amber.
126. case: Subject at hand.
128. Z—ds: Zounds, from ‘God’s wounds’. Gad: Polite form of ‘God’, to avoid swearing.
135. honours: ‘ornament; decoration’ (Dictionary).
156. bohea: See ‘Epistle to Mrs Teresa Blount’, 15n.
162. patch-box: Box for beauty patches, worn on the face.
164. Poll: A parrot, often called ‘Polly’.
Canto V
2. fate and Jove: Recalling Aeneas’ refusal to stay with Dido: ‘His hardened heart nor prayers nor threat’ning move, / Fate, and the god, had stopped his ears’ (Dryden’s Aeneid, IV, 636–7).
7. Clarissa: ‘a new character introduced in the subsequent editions, to open more clearly the moral of the poem, in a parody of the speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus in Homer’ (Pope’s note). For Pope’s translation of Sarpedon’s speech, see Excerpts from the Iliad, Book XII.
14–19. Why bows … front-box grace: At the theatre, ladies sat in the front boxes facing the stage, gentlemen in the side-boxes, and ordinary people in the pit.
20. smallpox: Frequently disfiguring or fatal in the eighteenth century, when inoculation was just being introduced.
21. housewife’s: Pronounced ‘hussif’s’.
37. virago: ‘a female warrior; a woman with the qualities of a man’ (Dictionary).
39. side in parties: Take sides.
47. Latona: Mother of Apollo and Diana.
53. sconce: Candle holder on a wall. ‘Minerva in like manner, during the battle of Ulysses with the suitors in the Odyssey, perches on a beam of the roof to behold it’ (Pope’s note).
57. press: ‘crowd; tumult; throng’ (Dictionary, citing this line).
62. Dapperwit: Character in Love in a Wood (1672) by William Wycherley.
63. Sir Fopling: Title character, a fatuous would-be wit, in The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter (1676), by George Etheredge.
64. ‘Those eyes are made so killing’: ‘the words in a song in the opera of Camilla’ (Pope’s note). Buononcini’s opera was extremely popular in London.
65. Meander’s: River in Asia Minor, which gave its name to rivers with a winding course.
66. as he sings he dies: The ‘swan song’; see ‘Windsor Forest’ 275 and note.
74. the wits mount up: i.e. they weigh even less than the ladies’ hairs.
78. die: With the old double entendre on ‘orgasm’.
83. just: ‘exact; proper; accurate’ (Dictionary).
113. the lunar sphere: Imitating Astolfo’s journey to the moon in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, in search of Orlando’s lost wits.
126. Proculus: Romulus was fabled to have been taken up into the heavens in a cloud; a senator named Julius Proculus claimed to have seen him in a vision.
127. liquid: Clear, transparent (liquidus).
128. trail of hair: The tail of the comet Berenices (whose name derives from a Greek word for ‘long-haired’).
129. Berenice: Egyptian queen whose lock of hair was said to have been metamorphosed into the constellation Coma Berenices.
133. beau monde: High society (French). the Mall: Fashionable walk in St James’s Park.
136. Rosamonda’s lake: Pond in the park.
137. Partridge: ‘John Partridge was a ridiculous star-gazer, who in his almanacs every year never failed to predict the downfall of the Pope and the king of France, then at war with the English’ (Pope’s note). Swift had skewered Partridge in the Bickerstaff Papers.
138. Galileo’s eyes: Through the telescope.
140. Louis: Louis XIV.
142. sphere: Pronounced to rhyme with ‘hair’.
Epistle to Mrs Teresa Blount On Teresa Blount, see Selected Letters, note 5. The title refers to the coronation of George I in 1714. For ‘Mrs’, see ‘Rape of the Lock’, Dedication note.
1. fond: ‘foolishly tender; injudiciously indulgent’ (Dictionary).
3. roll a melting eye: i.e. flirt.
4. spark: See ‘Rape of the Lock’, I, 73n.
7. Zephalinda: A romance name, which Teresa Blount liked to use in letters.
11. plain-work: ‘needlework as distinguished from embroidery’ (Dictionary, citing this line).
13. assembly: Public social gathering.
15. bohea: ‘a species of tea, of higher colour and more astringent taste than green tea’ (Dictionary). ‘Bohea’ and ‘tea’ were pronounced ‘bohay’ and ‘tay’.
18. dine exact at noon: i.e. far earlier than in fashionable London.
23. rack: ‘to torment; to harass’ (Dictionary).
24. whisk: The card game whist. sack: Sweet sherry.
26. buss: Kiss.
32. triumphs: i.e. romantic
conquests.
36. gartered knights: Holders of the high distinction of the Order of the Garter.
38. flirt: Dismissive gesture with a fan.
41. your slave: i.e. Pope himself.
43. abstracted from the crew: Daydreaming rather than noticing the throng.
46. Parthenia: Another romance name, connoting virginity; Martha Blount, Teresa’s sister, sometimes called herself ‘Parthenissa’.
47. Gay: Pope’s friend, the poet and playwright John Gay, author of The Beggar’s Opera. See also ‘Arbuthnot’, 258n. and 260n.; ‘Dunciad’, III, 330n.; and Selected Letters, note 21.
48. chairs: Sedan chairs, carried by two servants. coxcomb: See ‘Essay on Criticism’, 27n.
Eloisa to Abelard The twelfth-century theologian Peter Abelard fell in love with his student Héloïse, who gave birth to a son. To satisfy her outraged father, who was a canon of Notre Dame Cathedral, they entered into a secret marriage, but when Abelard lodged Héloïse in a convent her father believed he had abandoned her and hired thugs to castrate him. Abelard subsequently became a Benedictine monk and founded a monastery, the Paraclete (a name for the Holy Spirit); still later he gave it as a convent to Héloïse, who presided there over a community of nuns. In the seventeenth century their letters (written in Latin) were published, and a 1713 English translation by John Hughes was the principal source for ‘Eloisa to Abelard’. More generally, Pope followed the model of Ovid’s Heroides, verse letters imagined as written by famous women. Eloisa analyses her spiritual struggle with bitter clarity; when the poem was published in 1717, Pope hinted to both Martha Blount and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu that the final lines alluded to his own frustrated erotic yearnings.
Argument: several: Separate, different.
1. awful: Awe-inspiring; also 143.
4. vestal: A vestal virgin was a priestess in ancient Rome; thus, a nun.
10. holy silence: Monastic vow of silence.
12. idea: Image (not, as in modern usage, ‘concept’).
20. grots: Ornamental garden grotto, such as Pope had at Twickenham. horrid: ‘hideous; dreadful; shocking’ (Dictionary); bristling (horridus).
22. statues … weep: As condensed moisture runs down them.
56. Excuse: ‘to disengage from an obligation’ (Dictionary).
62. Mind: God.
The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings Page 42
